This is the November 2016 edition of This Month in WordPress with CodeinWP (#WCUS Edition).

What a month it was for WordPress people, and especially in the US! In case you don’t know, the end of November marked another annual WordCamp US event. It all took place in Philadelphia, in the awesome Pennsylvania Convention Center. Almost the whole ThemeIsle team was there as well, having a blast and enjoying the vibe to the fullest!

So, since we lived and breathed WordCamp US for the bigger part of the last month, we want to make this edition of the monthly news series all about #WCUS and things related.

If you missed the conference then you definitely shouldn’t miss this post. We summed up the main headlines for you:

November 2016 in WordPress

When it comes to all WordCamp US related events, we simply must start with the State of the Word. As usual, Matt Mullenweg’s talk was very interesting and was able to catch everyone’s attention.

If you were not in Philadelphia this year, or you somehow missed the talk despite being around, you can watch it in full over on WordPress.tv Expect valuable information, humor, stats, questions, and … poetry.

The new version of WordPress – “Vaughn” – was just released a couple of days ago. Helen Hou-Sandi, the coordinator of this project, gave us a talk for the State of the Word, in which she presented the new features and the team who worked on it during the past months.

A new default theme, a better menu handling, the (long-awaited) REST API inclusion, “sleeper hits” – these are just a couple of the improvements that came with the latest release.

More than 475 contributors added their work to version 4.7, of which 200 were first-time contributors. WordPress 4.7 even had its own presentation video, played Saturday in front of 2000 attendees.

We’re almost reaching the finish line of this year, and we’re leaving it on a positive note. WordPress now powers over 27% of the web, which is a noticeable improvement over the previously reported 25%.

Fun fact: In the past 5 years, WordPress has doubled its market share from 13.1% to 27.2%.

WordCamps and meetups in 2016

Curious about more numbers? Matt Mullenweg brought up some very interesting stats on all types of WordPress gatherings and meetups, be it local or international. When it comes to those, it’s the fastest growth we’ve seen in the last 5 years.

So, in 2016 there were:

116 WordCamps that gathered over 36,000 attendees, over 2000 speakers, over 1000 sponsors, and 750 organizers.

3193 meetups in 58 countries. They gathered more than 62,000 people (nearly double the WC number)

Alhough not very positive, this was the big news story during the first day of the event. Web hosting company Pantheon was allegedly banned as a sponsor after breaking an internal rule set by WordCamp organizers.

It’s alleged that Pantheon refused to take down their brand name advertising from a hotel that was a WordCamp “private space.”

I wonder what’s your opinion on this? Feel free to speak up in the comments.

Here’s Alain’s input on how he enjoyed meeting the US WordPress community. Alain didn’t only attend the WordCamp sessions, but he also took part in the PostStatus “Publish” event, which took place the day before WCUS. See how things went there.

This post covers everything: the talks, Matt’s speech, the hall track, the parties, the lunches, and everything else that happened between the Pennsylvania Convention Center walls and beyond.

By the way, don’t miss our own review, which will be up this week. We did take some days off in NYC after the event, but upon coming back we do want to share our volunteer experience, our projects during the WordCamp, the events we attended and more. Stay tuned!

About The Author

Writer and WordPress blogger at ThemeIsle, CodeinWP, and Revive Social. Occasionally, I share content marketing tips on my personal blog. When I'm not creating content, I'm either on a mountain trail, at a metal concert, playing tennis, or reading.